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People: Elizabeth Warren

Harvard Law School Professor and Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren—bankruptcy expert, Wall Street reformer and consumer watch dog—has won a hard-fought race for the U.S. Senate against her Republican opponent, incumbent Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown.

Harvard Law School graduates across the country won political victories in the 2012 elections. In addition to a victory by President Barack Obama ’91in a close race with Republican candidate Mitt Romney J.D./M.B.A ‘75. A Harvard Law School Professor and two HLS alumni won seats in the Senate, and 15 alumni are going to the House.

Last year, after Rory Van Loo ’07 left the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau implementation team to become assistant director of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program, he asked his former colleagues how HLS students might assist the new agency. It had been created by Congress in 2010 largely thanks to the vision of HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren, and its mission included examining certain consumer financial services companies and large banks and credit unions. But the legislation creating it did not establish an appeals process for examining findings.

Poor underwriting, predatory lending, sloppy record-keeping, neighborhood blight, ill-considered or invalid foreclosure decisions, the inability or refusal of banks to negotiate with homeowners, homeowner protection scams—all these are widespread problems that Professor Elizabeth Warren has long been addressing. She served for nearly two years as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which addressed foreclosure mitigation and […]

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Professors Elizabeth Warren, Laurence Tribe ’66, Nancy Gertner, and Noah Feldman all received honorary degrees at college and law school commencement ceremonies this spring.

President Barack Obama ’91 today announced that Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren will serve as an Assistant to the President and as a Special Adviser to the Treasury Secretary on the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren continues to gain support for serving as director of the newly created Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. In a letter to the Oval Office, HLS students from the classes of 2011 and 2012 are urging the president to nominate Warren for the top spot at the bureau.

One hundred sixty-two former students of Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the White House on July 28, urging President Barack Obama ’91 to appoint her as director of the newly created Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

In a Boston Globe op-ed, “Obama should give Warren a recess appointment,” HLS Professor Charles Fried supports an interim appointment for Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Fried served as solicitor general in the second Reagan administration and as a justice on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. His op-ed appeared in the July 29, 2010, edition of the Boston Globe.

Two years after the government bailout of Bear Stearns set off the first shock wave, the Bulletin interviewed HLS faculty and alumni on what went wrong, on where the greatest dangers remain in our financial system and what to do about them.